James Muri; B-26 pilot saved crew in Battle of Midway

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Mr. Muri’s return to his base on Midway Island was dogged by Zero fighter planes.

By Paul Vitello
New York Times
February 10, 2013

NEW YORK — James Muri survived the first half of June 4, 1942, on the strength of his Army Air Forces pilot training. That was the day of his first combat mission, and the first day of the Battle of Midway.

He piloted an unwieldy B-26 twin-engine bomber through heavy antiaircraft fire, maneuvered it close to a Japanese aircraft carrier, dropped a torpedo, and pulled away into a sky filled with enemy shells just as his bomb detonated.

He survived the second half of the day — getting back to base with three wounded crewmen on board — on the strength of a hunch.

Mr. Muri, who died on Feb. 3 in Laurel, Mont., at 94, first had to evade the hail of antiaircraft fire still coming from the carrier he had just attacked. His inspiration, which saved the lives of his crew as well as his own, was to swing around, go in low, and fly straight over the carrier’s deck to avoid its guns.

‘‘The guns were all pointing out. That was the safest place to be,’’ he said, explaining his reasoning in a 2002 interview with The Billings Gazette. ‘‘I always said we could have touched down if we had lowered the gear.’’

Mr. Muri’s return to his base on Midway Island was dogged by Zero fighter planes. After his two gunners were wounded, he sent his copilot to man the plane’s antiaircraft cannons during the long flight back.

He and his crewmen, all of whom survived, were among 42 members of the Army Air Forces awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for valor in the Battle of Midway, which was considered the decisive contest for control of the Pacific in World War II. Fourteen of the members killed in the battle received the medal posthumously.

Mr. Muri stayed in the Army Air Forces after the war, when it became the Air Force. He trained other pilots and served in several command posts around the world, including Japan, before retiring in 1959. He later became a real estate investor. But his combat mission in the Battle of Midway was his first and last.

‘‘I don’t think he minded one bit not flying another mission,’’ said his son, who is also named James Muri. ‘‘It always surprised him a little that people even wanted to talk about it at all. I don’t think he realized it was as big a deal as it turned out to be.’’

James Perry Muri was born on Oct. 19, 1918, in Cartersville, Mont., the second of nine children of Rasmus and Nelle Muri, who were rancher-farmers. Soon after graduating from Custer County High School in Miles City, he joined the Army in 1936 and was a lieutenant in the Army Air Forces at the outbreak of the war.

A younger brother, Robert, who died last year, also became an Army pilot and spent 15 months in a German prison camp after his plane was shot down.

On Christmas Day in 1941, a few weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Muri married Alice Moyer of Riverside, Calif. Her nickname was Susie Q., and Mr. Muri had it stenciled on his plane’s cockpit.

On June 4, 1942, after a near crash landing at the base (the landing gear had been shot up), Mr. Muri and his crew said they counted 500 holes in the fuselage of the Susie Q. He credited his wife, who died in 2001, with the miracle of his survival.